Archive for the ‘Brainwashing’ Category

Five Simple Truths about the Mideast Conflict

By Michael Brown

5/28/2011

Is there any subject more controversial than the question of the legitimacy of the modern State of Israel? Is it the eternal home of the Jewish people, promised to them by God Himself? Or is it the illegitimate home of violent Jewish occupiers, an apartheid state guilty of ethnic cleansing? Or is it something in between? In the midst of the often emotional arguments on both sides, it is helpful to review five simple truths about the Mideast conflict.

1. There is no such thing as a historic “Palestinian people” living in the Middle East. To be sure, there have been Arabs living in the land of Palestine for centuries. (The land of Israel was derisively renamed “Palestine” by the Romans in the second century A.D.). And it is true that some of these families have lived in Palestine without interruption for many generations. But at no time before 1967 did these Arabs identify themselves as “Palestinians,” nor did they seek to achieve any kind of statehood there. As expressed by former terrorist Walid Shoebat, “Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”

Before 1967, there was no such thing as Arab, Palestinian nationalism and no attempt to develop the territory as a homeland for the Arabs who lived there, and in 1936, when the Palestine Orchestra was formed, it was a Jewish orchestra. In fact, the original name of the Jerusalem Post, the flagship Jewish newspaper, was the Palestine Post.

There is no question that there are several million people who identify themselves as Palestinians today, and many of these people have suffered great hardship in recent years. Nonetheless, the concept of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, and it is part of the anti-Israel propaganda machine without any basis in fact. The recent comments of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, claiming a 9,000 year Palestinian pedigree, are purely fictional: “Oh, Netanyahu, you are incidental in history; we are the people of history. We are the owners of history.”

2. There were anti-Jewish intifadas in Palestine two decades before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. We are often told that Jews and Arabs coexisted peacefully in Palestine prior to the formation of the Jewish state in 1948, or at least, prior to the rise of strong Jewish nationalism. In reality, as Jews began to return to their one and only ancestral homeland in the late 19th century, hostilities began to rise among their Arab neighbors, despite the fact that there was more than enough room for both.

By the 1920’s, radical Muslim leaders like Haj Amin Al-Husseini, later a confidant of Adolph Hitler, were organizing intifadas against the Jewish population, with many Jewish lives lost. And what helped fuel Al-Husseini’s Jew-hatred was the anti-Jewish sentiment found in the Koran and early Muslim traditions. Post-1948 Jew-hatred simply built on centuries of Islamic anti-Semitism.

3. Jewish refugees fleeing from Muslim and Arab countries were absorbed by Israel after 1948; Arab refugees fleeing from Israel after 1948 were not absorbed by Muslim and Arab countries. Despite the fact that the Muslim nations surrounding Israel are 650 times the size of this tiny state, they made no effort to absorb the approximately 600,000 Arab refugees who fled Israel in 1948 when war was declared on Israel by five neighboring Arab nations.

To this day, these refugees are not welcomed by other Arab states. As expressed more than 20 years ago by Ralph Galloway, former head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, “The Arab States do want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel.” Yet Israel absorbed roughly 800,000 Jewish refugees that had to flee from Muslim nations after 1948.

4. Only one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is truly committed to peaceful co-existence. It is often stated that if the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be no more war but if the Israelis put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel. This is not to say that all Palestinians are warmongers and all Israelis are doves. But the vast majority of Israelis are not driven by a radical ideology that calls for the extermination of their Arab neighbors, nor are they teaching their children songs about the virtues of religious martyrdom.

Israel does not relish spending a major portion of its budget on defense, nor does it relish sending its sons and daughters into military service. It simply will not surrender Jerusalem, its historic and religious capital, and it will not commit regional suicide by retreating to indefensible borders. In return it simply asks the Palestinians to say, “We embrace your right to exist.”

5. The current uprisings throughout the Muslim and Arab world today remind us that Israel cannot fairly be blamed for all the tension and conflicts in the region. The nation of Israel is obviously not faultless in the current conflict, but it is ludicrous to think that without the presence of this supposed evil nation in the Middle East, all would be well. There have been constant disputes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and in 1980, Abd Alhalim Khaddam, then Syria’s Foreign Minister, admitted, “If we look at a map of the Arab Homeland, we can hardly find two countries without conflict. . . . We can hardly find two countries which are not either in a state of war or on the road to war.”

Certainly, there are many obstacles that stand in the way of a true peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the road ahead is fraught with uncertainty, but it would be a good starting point if we replaced myths and emotional arguments with facts.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown is host of the daily, syndicated talk radio show, The Line of Fire, and author of A Queer Thing Happened to America: And What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.

THIS IS THE FINAL chapter in our series, Answers to Objections. The list is now complete (unless someone sends us another objection). You will sometimes criticize Islam and a Muslim will say something like, “My family and my community is Muslim, and none of us are terrorists.” Rather than jumping in and crying “taqiyya!” I think the best approach is to take their statement as a sincere and even innocent and legitimate objection, just as a matter of policy.

I once got this objection from a young woman who I knew was promiscuous and partied a lot (including drinking alcohol, which Islamic doctrine says is taboo). My response was, “I am criticizing Islamic teachings. You do not follow these teachings, so what are you objecting to?” It effectively stopped her in her tracks. I think she was afraid someone in her family would find out, and didn’t want me saying any more.

But I generally avoid telling Muslims about the doctrines of Islam. If they don’t know, I’d rather they stayed ignorant, unless I feel I could actually turn them into apostates. And if they already know the doctrines, I am unlikely to dislodge their belief, so it’s a waste of time.

But occassionally you will accidentally have to engage Muslims. For the most part, you can simply say, “I’m glad you and your family and community are not terrorists.” But if you have an audience — if this is a public conversation, or if it’s a comment on Facebook or a blog or YouTube, and others are waiting to see how you will respond — here’s a way you could answer the objection:

Terrorism is a tactic. The goal is to bring “the light of Islam” to the world. That is one of a Muslim’s primary religious obligations. It is known as jihad. The purpose of jihad is not to blow things up. The purpose is to bring Islamic law to the world; to ultimately create the conditions wherein all people on earth are under the legal rule of Sharia law.

One way to accomplish this goal is with intimidation. If you can frighten people with your willingness to do violence if they don’t comply, if you have sufficient power to inflict the violence, this tactic can be very effective. In places like India, where there is a sizable minority of Muslims, the tactic is powerful.

But in a place like the United States, where the Muslim population is only one percent, it is much less effective. So other tactics are used here. The Muslim Brotherhood — the largest Muslim organization in the world — has set up lots of seemingly mainstream and moderate organizations, working legally within the United States and other Western democracies, to accomplish the goal of getting non-Muslims to follow the legal rules of Islamic law. For example, it is against Sharia law to criticize Islam or Mohammad, and these organizations are working hard to make Americans follow this rule. So organizations like CAIR will sue people, or get the media involved in conflicts so someone gets fired, and many other legal means they can use to suppress the free expressions guaranteed under our constitution but illegal under Sharia, and they often succeed. One example of their success was the riots over the Mohammad cartoons. One one newspaper in the United States reprinted the cartoons. Every other newspaper, in essence, followed Sharia law.

Groups like CAIR and ISNA are funded, in part, by donations from Muslims. And many other politically-oriented Muslim projects are funded by mosques around the country. So if the Muslim who has a family and community who are not terrorists are paying their zakat, they may well be funding this ongoing non-violent jihad without knowing it. If they are a member of any religious organizations like the Muslim Students Association, ISNA, or whatever, they may be advancing the agenda without ever doing anything that might be considered “terrorism.”

My general goal when answering an objection is using the objection as an opportunity to get more good information into the other person’s head. Not to argue. To educate.

Now in this case, you are answering a Muslim, but the purpose is not to educate the Muslim. Try to educate anyone who is listening. I don’t recommend arguing with Muslims at any time. You have more important things to do. Focus your attention on educating your fellow non-Muslims. But if the situation comes up, and if there is a non-Muslim audience, use your conversation with the Muslim to help educate your fellow non-Muslims. Get some important, basic facts into their heads.

One of the most frequently used arguments in the defense of Islam is that the Bible is just as violent as the Koran. The logic goes like this. If the Koran is no more violent than the Bible, then why should we worry about Islam? This argument suggests that Islam is the same as Christianity and Judaism. This is false, but the analogy is very popular since it allows someone who knows nothing about the actual doctrine of Islam to talk about it. “See, Islam is like Christianity; Christians are just as violent as Muslims.” If this is true, then you don’t have to learn anything about the actual Islamic doctrine.

However, this is not a theological argument. It is a political one. This argument is not about what goes on in a house of worship, but what goes on the in the marketplace of ideas.

Now, is the doctrine of Islam more violent than the Koran? There is only one way to prove or disprove the comparison, and that is to measure the differences in violence in the Koran and the Bible.

The first item is to define violence. The only violence that matters to someone outside of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism is what they do to the “other,” or political violence. Cain killing Abel is not political violence. Political violence is not killing a lamb for a meal or making an animal sacrifice. Note that regardless of whether a vegan or a PETA member considers both of these actions violent, neither constitutes violence against vegans or PETA members.

The next item is to compare the doctrines both quantitatively and qualitatively. The political violence of the Koran is called “fighting in Allah’s cause,” or jihad.

We must do more than measure the jihad in the Koran. Islam has three sacred texts: Koran, Sira, and Hadith, or the Islamic Trilogy. The Sira is Mohammed’s biography. The Hadith are his traditions — what he did and said. Sira and Hadith form the Sunna, the perfect pattern of all Islamic behavior.

The Koran is the smallest of the three books, also called the Trilogy. It is only 16% of the Trilogy text[1]. This means that the Sunna is 84% of the word content of Islam’s sacred texts. This statistic alone has large implications. Most of the Islamic doctrine is about Mohammed, not Allah. The Koran says 91 different times that Mohammed’s is the perfect pattern of life. It is much more important to know Mohammed than the Koran. This is very good news. It is easy to understand a biography about a man. To know Islam, know Mohammed.

It turns out that jihad occurs in large proportion in all three texts. Here is a chart about the results:

It is very significant that the Sira devotes 67% of its text to jihad. Mohammed averaged an event of violence every six weeks for the last nine years of his life. Jihad was what made Mohammed successful. Here is a chart of the growth of Islam.

Basically, when Mohammed was a preacher of religion, Islam grew at the rate of ten new Muslims per year. But when he turned to jihad, Islam grew at an average rate of ten thousand per year. All the details of how to wage jihad are recorded in great detail. The Koran gives the great vision of jihad — world conquest by the political process. The Sira is a strategic manual, and the Hadith is a tactical manual, of jihad.

Now let’s go to the Hebrew Bible. When we count all the political violence, we find that 5.6% of the text is devoted to it. There is no admonition towards political violence in the New Testament.

When we count the magnitude of words devoted to political violence, we have 327,547 words in the Trilogy[2] and 34,039 words in the Hebrew Bible[3]. The Trilogy has 9.6 times as much wordage devoted to political violence as the Hebrew Bible.

The real problem goes far beyond the quantitative measurement of ten times as much violent material; there is also the qualitative measurement. The political violence of the Koran is eternal and universal. The political violence of the Bible was for that particular historical time and place. This is the vast difference between Islam and other ideologies. The violence remains a constant threat to all non-Islamic cultures, now and into the future. Islam is not analogous to Christianity and Judaism in any practical way. Beyond the one-god doctrine, Islam is unique unto itself.

Another measurement of the difference between the violence found in the Judeo/Christian texts and that of Islam is found in the use of fear of violence against artists, critics, and intellectuals. What artist, critic, or intellectual ever feels a twinge of fear if condemning anything Christian or Jewish? However, look at the examples of the violent political threats against and/or murders of Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Pim Fortune, Kurt Westergaard of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, and many others. What artist, critic, or intellectual has not had a twinge of fear about Islam when it comes to free expression? The political difference in the responses to the two different doctrines is enormous. The political fruits from the two trees are as different as night and day.

It is time for so-called intellectuals to get down to the basics of judging Islam by its actual doctrine, not making lame analogies that are sophomoric assertions. Fact-based reasoning should replace fantasies that are based upon political correctness and multiculturalism.

– Bill Warner, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam

Who is responsible for these injuries? Terry Jones? No — despite the best efforts of Barack Obama, General Petraeus and so many others to portray him as responsible for any violence in the Muslim world that may occur in response to his Qur’an-burning. Obama and Petraeus and the rest have forgotten, or want us to forget, that one’s response to someone else’s provocative action is entirely one’s own responsibility. If you do something that offends me, I am under no obligation to kill you, or injure you, or run to the United Nations to try to get laws passed that will silence you. I am free to ignore you, or laugh at you, or to respond with charity, or to respond with insult, or any number of reactions.

Obama and Petraeus ought to be saying, Yes, of course we disapprove of this Qur’an-burning, but in America we believe that freedom of expression is a fundamental bulwark against tyranny and hallmark of a truly free society, and it requires us to put up with things we don’t like without responding with violence. They could, in other words, be using this as a teaching moment to demonstrate why free societies are preferable to Sharia states. But they don’t dare do that, and instead are effectively reinforcing the principle that violent intimidation works: they know that some idiot is going to injure or kill someone in Afghanistan or somewhere because of this, and so they want to Terry Jones to stand down. Instead, they should be telling these Afghans to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that if someone burns a Qur’an in Florida, it doesn’t harm them, or the Qur’an, or Allah, or Muhammad, and that to respond with irrational violence against people who are not involved with the burning (or against the people who are involved with it) is just savagery.

All the politicians are busy condemning Terry Jones. Everyone in the world is busy condemning Terry Jones. Everyone seems to have forgotten about freedom of expression, and why it is so important to reinforce even when we find the expression detestable — indeed, especially in such cases. And so, if we continue down this path, one thing is certain: that which is not understood or valued will not be protected, and so it will be lost.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Thousands of Afghans are protesting a small American church’s plan to burn the Muslim holy book. At least 11 people have been injured.Police in the northern province of Badakhshan say several hundred demonstrators ran toward a NATO compound where four attackers and five police were injured in clashes. Protesters also burned an American flag at a mosque after Friday prayers.

In western Farah province, police said two people were injured in another protest….

Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God.

This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.

For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.

Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality.

And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.

And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

The Myths of Islam

Muslims often complain of the popular “misconceptions” about their religion in the West.

We took a hard look, however, and found that the most deeply held myths of Islam are the ones generated by Muslims and Western apologists. The only glaring exception to this is the misconception that all Muslims are alike (they aren’t, of course), but even Muslims fall into this as well, as evidenced by the various contrary factions insisting that they are the true Muslims, while those who disagree with them are either infidels, hijackers, or hypocrites.

Lesser educated Muslims sometimes claim that the root word of Islam is “al-Salaam,” which is “peace” in Arabic.

The Truth:

An Arabic word only has one root. The root word for Islam is “al-Silm,” which means “submission” or “surrender.” There is no controversy about this among Islamic scholars. al-Silm (submission) does not mean the same thing as al-Salaam (peace), otherwise they would be the same word.

Submission and peace can be very different concepts, even if a form of peace is often brought about through forcing others into submission. As the modern-day Islamic scholar, Ibrahim Sulaiman, puts it, “Jihad is not inhumane, despite its necessary violence and bloodshed, its ultimate desire is peace which is protected and enhanced by the rule of law.”

In truth, the Qur’an not only calls Muslims to submit to Allah, it also commands them to subdue people of other religions until they are in a full state of submission to Islamic rule. This has inspired the aggressive history of Islam and its success in conquering other cultures.

Islam Respects Women as Equals

The Myth:

The Qur’an places men and women on equal foundation before Allah. Each person is judged according to his or her own deeds. Women have equal rights under Islamic law.

The Truth:

Merely stating that individuals will be judged as such by Allah does not mean that they have equal rights and roles, or that they are judged by the same standards.

There is no ambiguity in the Qur’an, the life of Muhammad, or Islamic law as to the inferiority of women to men, despite the efforts of modern-day apologists to salvage Western-style feminism from scraps and fragments of verses that have historically held no such progressive interpretation.

After military conquests, Muhammad would dole out captured women as war prizes to his men. In at least one case, he advocated that they be raped in front of their husbands. Captured women were made into sex slaves by the very men who killed their husbands and brothers. There are four Qur’anic verses in which “Allah” makes clear that a Muslim master has full sexual access to his female slaves, yet there is not one that prohibits rape.

The Qur’an gives Muslim men permission to beat their wives for disobedience. It plainly says that husbands are “a degree above” wives. The Hadith says that women are intellectually inferior, and that they comprise the majority of Hell’s occupants.

Under Islamic law, a man may divorce his wife at the drop of a hat. If he does this twice, then wishes to remarry her, she must first have sex with another man. Men are exempt from such degradations.

Muslim women are not free to marry whomever they please, as are Muslim men. Their husband may also bring other wives (and slaves) into the marriage bed. And she must be be sexually available to him at any time (as a field ready to be “tilled,” according to the holy book of Islam).

Muslim women do not inherit property in equal portions to males. Their testimony in court is considered to be worth only half that of a man’s. Unlike a man, she must cover her head – and often her face.

If a woman wants to prove that she was raped, then there must be four male witnesses to corroborate her account. Otherwise she can be jailed or stoned to death for confessing to “adultery.”

Given all of this, it is quite a stretch to say that men and women have “equality under Islam” based on obscure theological analogies or comparisons. This is an entirely new ploy that may be designed for modern tastes, but is in sharp disagreement with the reality of Islamic law and history.

Islam’s Western apologists sometimes claim that since the Arabic word, Jihad, literally means “fight” or “struggle,” it refers to an “inner struggle” rather than holy war.

The Truth:

This is extremely difficult to reconcile with the Qur’an, which, for example, exempted the disabled and elderly from Jihad (4:95). This would make no sense if the word is being used merely within the context of spiritual struggle. It is also unclear why Muhammad would use graphic language, such as smiting fingers and heads from the hands and necks of unbelievers if he were speaking merely of character development.

With this in mind, Muslims generally admit that there are two meanings to the word, but insist that “inner struggle” is the “greater Jihad,” whereas “holy war” is the “lesser.” In fact, this misconception is based only on an a single hadith that is extremely weak and unreliable.

By contrast, the most reliable of all Hadith collections is that of Bukhari. The word, Jihad, is mentioned over 200 times in reference to the words of Muhammad and each one is a clear connotation to holy war, with only a handful of possible exceptions (dealing with a woman’s supporting role during a time of holy war).

Muhammad was a peaceful man who taught his followers to be the same. Muslims lived peacefully for centuries, fighting only in self-defense – and when it was necessary. True Muslims would never act aggressively.

The Truth:

Muhammad organized 65 military campaigns in the last ten years of his life and personally led 27 of them. The more power that he attained, the smaller the excuse needed to go to battle, until finally he began attacking tribes merely because they were not part of his growing empire.

After Muhammad’s death, his most faithful followers and even his own family turned on each other almost immediately. There were four Caliphs (leaders) in the first twenty-five years, each of which was a trusted companion of his. Three of these four were murdered. The third Caliph was murdered by the son of the first. The fourth Caliph was murdered by the fifth, who left a 100-year dynasty that was ended in a gruesome, widespread bloodbath by descendents of Muhammad’s uncle.

Muhammad’s own daughter, Fatima, and his son-in-law, Ali, who both survived the pagan hardship during the Meccan years safe and sound, did not survive Islam after the death of Muhammad. Fatima died of stress from persecution within three months, and Ali was later assassinated by Muslim rivals. Their son (Muhammad’s grandson) was killed in battle with the faction that became today’s Sunnis. His people became Shias. The relatives and personal friends of Muhammad were mixed into both warring groups, which then fractured further into hostile sub-divisions as Islam expanded.

Muslim apologists who like to say that is impossible for today’s terrorists to be Muslim when they kill fellow Muslims would have a very tough time explaining the war between Fatima and Aisha to a knowledgeable audience. Muhammad’s favorite daughter and his favorite wife were both explicitly held up by him as model Muslim women before they engaged in violent battle following his death. Which one was the prophet of God so horribly wrong about?

Muhammad left his men with instructions to take the battle against Christians, Persians, Jews and polytheists (which came to include millions of unfortunate Hindus). For the next four centuries, Muslim armies steamrolled over unsuspecting neighbors, plundering them of loot and slaves, and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword.

Companions of Muhammad lived to see Islam declare war on every major religion in the world in just the first few decades following his death – pressing the Jihad against Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists.

By the time of the Crusades (when the Europeans began fighting back), Muslims had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world by sword, from Syria to Spain, and across North Africa.

Millions of Christians were enslaved by Muslims, and tens of millions of Africans. The Arab slave-trading routes would stay open for 1300 years, until pressure from Christian-based countries forced Islamic nations to declare the practice illegal (in theory). To this day, the Muslim world has never apologized for the victims of Jihad and slavery.

There is not another religion in the world that consistently produces terrorism in the name of religion as does Islam. The most dangerous Muslims are nearly always those who interpret the Qur’an most transparently. They are the fundamentalists or purists of the faith, and believe in Muhammad’s mandate to spread Islamic rule by the sword, putting to death those who will not submit.

The holy texts of Islam are saturated with verses of violence and hatred toward those outside the faith. In sharp contrast to the Bible, which generally moves from relatively violent episodes to far more peaceful mandates, the Qur’an travels the exact opposite path (violence is first forbidden, then permitted, then mandatory). The handful of earlier verses that speak of tolerance are overwhelmed by an avalanche of later ones that carry a much different message. While Old Testament verses of blood and guts are generally bound by historical context within the text itself, Qur’anic imperatives to violence usually appear open-ended and subject to personal interpretation.

By any objective measure, the “Religion of Peace” has been the harshest, bloodiest religion the world has ever known.

Religious minorities have flourished under Islam. Muslims are commanded to protect Jews and Christians (the People of the Book) and to do them no harm. The Qur’an says in Sura 109, “To you, your religion. To me, mine.”

The Truth:

Religious minorities have not “flourished” under Islam. In fact, they have dwindled to mere shadows after centuries of persecution and discrimination. Some were converted from their native religion by brute force, others under the agonizing strain of dhimmitude.

What Muslims call “tolerance,” others correctly identify as institutionalized discrimination. The consignment of Jews and Christians to dhimmis under Islamic rule means that they are not allowed the same religious rights and freedoms as Muslims. They cannot share their faith, for example, or build houses of worship without permission.

Historically, dhimmis have often had to wear distinguishing clothing or cut their hair in a particular manner that indicates their position of inferiority and humiliation. They do not share the same legal rights as Muslims, and must even pay a poll tax (the jizya). They are to be killed or have their children taken from them if they cannot satisfy the tax collector’s requirements.

For hundreds of years, the Christian population in occupied Europe had their sons taken away and forcibly converted into Muslim warriors (known as Jannisaries) by the Ottoman Turks.

It is under this burden of discrimination and third-class status that so many converted to Islam over the centuries. Those who didn’t often faced economic and social hardships that persist to this day and are appalling by Western standards of true religious tolerance and pluralism.

For those who are not “the People of the Book,” such as Hindus and atheists, there is very little tolerance to be found once Islam establishes political superiority. The Qur’an tells Muslims to “fight in the way of Allah” until “religion is only for Allah.” The conquered populations face death if they do not establish regular prayer and charity in the Islamic tradition (ie. the pillars of Islam).

Tamerlane and other Muslim warriors slaughtered tens of millions of Hindus and Buddhists, as well as displacing or forcibly converting millions more over the last thousand years. Islamists in Somalia behead Christians. In Iran, they are jailed.

One of the great ironies of Islam is that non-Muslims are to be treated according to the very standards by which Muslims themselves would claim the right to violent self-defense were the shoe on the other foot. Islam is its own justification. Most Muslims therefore feel no need to question the ingrained arrogance and double standards.

At best, the “religion of peace” has a dual personality toward other religions. In some places they are explicitly cursed by Allah, in others there appears to be a measure of tolerance shown. There are about 500 verses in the Qur’an that speak of Allah’s hatred for non-Muslims and the punishment that he has prepared for their unbelief. There is also a tiny handful that say otherwise, but these are mostly earlier verses that many scholars consider to be abrogated by the later, more violent ones.

As for Sura 109, any true Qur’an scholar will point out that the purpose of the verse was to distinguish Islam from the gods of the Quraysh (of which one was named “Allah”) rather than to advocate religious tolerance for non-Muslims. At the time that he narrated this very early verse, Muhammad did not have any power, and thus no choice but to be “tolerant” of others. By contrast, there was no true tolerance shown when he returned to Mecca with power many years later and demanded that anyone who would not convert to Islam be evicted from the city or put to the sword (see Sura 9).

If tolerance simply means discouraging the mass slaughter of those of a different faith, then today’s Islam generally meets this standard more often than not. But, if tolerance means allowing people of other faiths the same religious liberties that Muslims enjoy, then Islam is fundamentally the most intolerant religion under the sun.

Islam and the “Golden Age” of Scientific Discovery

The Myth:

Muslims often claim that their religion fostered a rich heritage of scientific discovery, “paving the way” for modern advances in technology and medicine. On this topic, they usually refer to the period between the 7th and 13th centuries, when Europe was experiencing its “Dark Ages” and the Muslim world was conquering new populations and culture.

The Truth:

Although there is no arguing that the Muslim world was relatively more advanced during this period than the “Christian” world, the reasons for this have absolutely nothing to do with the Islamic religion (other than its mandate for military expansion). In fact, the religion actively discourages knowledge outside of itself, which is why the most prolific Muslim scholars throughout history tend to be students of religion rather than science.

There are four basic reasons why Islam has little true claim to scientific achievement:

First, the Muslim world benefited greatly from the Greek sciences, which were translated for them by Christians and Jews. To their credit, Muslims did a better job of preserving Greek text than did the Europeans of the time and this became the foundation for their own knowledge. (One large reason for this, however, was that access by Christians to this part of their world was cut off by Muslim slave ships and coastal raids that dominated the Mediterranean during this period).

Secondly, many of the scientific advances credited to Islam were actually “borrowed” from other cultures conquered by the Muslims. The algebraic concept of “zero”, for example, is erroneously attributed to Islam, but it was, in fact, a Hindu discovery that was merely introduced to the West by Muslims.

In fact, conquered populations contributed greatly to the history of “Muslim science” until gradually being decimated by conversion to Islam (under the pressures of dhimmitude). The Muslim concentration within a population is directly proportional to the decline of scientific achievement. It is no accident that the Muslim world has had little to show for itself in the last 800 years or so, since running out of new civilizations to cannibalize.

Third, even the great Muslim scientists and icons were often considered heretics in their time, sometimes for good reason. One of the greatest achievers to come out of the Muslim world was the Persian scientist and philosopher, al-Razi. His impressive works are often held up today as “proof” of Muslim accomplishment. But what the apologists often leave out is that al-Razi was denounced as a blasphemer, since he followed his own religious beliefs – which were in obvious contradiction to traditional Islam.

Fourth, even the contributions that are attributed to Islam (often inaccurately) are not terribly dramatic. There is the invention of certain words, such as alchemy and elixir, but not much else that survives in modern technology that is of any practical significance. Neither is there any reason to believe that such discoveries would not have easily been made by the West following the cultural awakening triggered by the Reformation.

As an example of this, consider that Muslims claim credit for coffee, since the beans were discovered in Africa (at the time, an important venue for Islamic slave trading) and first processed in the Middle East. While this is true, it is also true that the red dye used in many food products, from cranberry juice to candy, comes from the abdomen of a particular female beetle found in South America. It is extremely unlikely that the West would not have stumbled across coffee by now (although, to be fair, coffee probably expedited subsequent discoveries).

In fact, the litany of “Muslim” achievement often takes the form of rhapsody, in which the true origins of these discoveries are omitted – along with their comparative significance to Western achievement. One often doesn’t hear about the dismal fate of original accomplishments either. Those who brag about the great observatory of Taqi al-Din in [freshly conquered] Istanbul, for example, often neglect to mention that it was quickly destroyed by the caliphate.

At the end of the day, scientific, medical and technological accomplishment is not something over which Muslim apologists want to get into a pissing contest with the Christian world. Today’s Islamic innovators are primarily known for turning Western technology, such as cell phones and airplanes, into instruments of mass murder.

To sum up, although the Islamic religion is not entirely hostile to science, neither should it be confused as a facilitator. The great achievements that are said to have come out of the Islamic world were made either by non-Muslims who happened to be under Islamic rule, or by heretics who usually had little interest in Islam. Scientific discovery tapers off dramatically as Islam asserts dominance, until it eventually peters out altogether.

Islam is Opposed to Slavery

The Myth:

Islam is intolerant of enslaving human beings. The religion eradicated the institution of slavery thanks to the principles set in motion by Muhammad, who was an abolitionist.

The Truth:

There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Qur’an. In fact, the “holy” book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.

The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes its findings:

Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery. (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life)

Even the very pulpit from which Muhammad preached Islam was built by slave labor on his command!

As such, this deeply dehumanizing horror has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam since the days of Muhammad to the current plight of non-Muslims in the Sudan, Mali, Niger and Mauritania, as well as other parts of the Muslim world.

There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement). The abolition of slavery was imposed on the Islamic world by European countries, along with other political pressures that were entirely unrelated to Islamic law.

Although horrible abuses of slaves in the Muslim world were recorded, there has been little inclination toward the documentation and earnest contrition that one finds in the West. The absence of a guilty Muslim conscience often leads to the mistaken impression that slavery was not as bad under Islam… when it is actually indicative of the explicit tolerance the religion has for this practice

So narcissistic is the effect of Islam on the devoted, that to this day many Muslims believe in their hearts that the women and children carried off in battle, and their surviving men folk, were actually done a favor by the Muslim warriors who plucked them from their fields and homes and relegated them to lives of demeaning servitude.

Shame and apology, no matter how appropriate, are almost never to be found in Dar al-Islam. Caliphs, the religious equivalent of popes, maintained harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women captured from lands as far away as Europe and consigned to sexual slavery. Hungarians were hunted like animals by the Turks, who carried 3 million into slavery over a 150 year period in the 1500-1600’s. In India, 200,000 Hindus were captured and transported to Iranian slave markets in just a two year span (1619-1620) by one of the kinder Muslim rulers.

African slaves were often castrated by their Muslim masters. Few survived to reproduce, which is why there are not many people of African descent living in the Middle East, even though more slaves were taken out of Africa in the 1300 years of Arab slave trading than in the 300 years of European slavery. The 400,000 slaves brought to America, for example, have now become a community of 30 million, with a much higher standard of living than their African peers.

There is no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islamic history as there is in Christianity. When asked to produce the name of a Muslim abolitionist, apologists sometimes meekly suggest Muhammad himself. But, if a slave owner and trader, who commanded the capture and sexual exploitation of slaves, and left a 13-century legacy of divinely-sanctioned slavery, is the best that Islam can offer, then no amount of sophistry will be enough to convince any but the most ignorant.

Islam is completely incompatible with acts of terrorism. It is against Islam to kill innocent people.

The Truth:

Even though many Muslims earnestly believe that their religion prohibits the killing of innocent people by acts of terrorism, the truth is certainly more complicated. This is why the Jihadis and their detractors are both able to point fingers at the other, while confidently insisting that they are the true Muslims. It is also why organizations that commit horrible atrocities in the name of Allah, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, receive moral and financial support from mainstream Muslims and Islamic charities.

In fact, the definition of an “innocent person” is far more ambiguous in Islam than Muslim apologists want others to know. So, also, is the definition of terrorism.

First, consider that anyone who rejects Muhammad is not considered to be innocent under Islamic law. The most protected and respected of all non-Muslims are the dhimma, the “people of the book.” These would specifically be Jews and Christians who agree to Islamic rule and pay the jizya (tribute to Muslims). Yet, the word “dhimmi” comes from the Arabic root meaning “guilt” or “blame.” [“…the dhimmi parent and sister words mean both ‘to blame’ as well as safeguards that can be extended to protect the blameworthy” Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land]

So, if even the dhimma have a measure of guilt attached to their status (by virtue of having rejected Allah’s full truth), then how can non-Muslims who oppose Islamic rule or refuse to pay the jizya be considered “innocent?”

Within the Islamic community itself there is a category of Muslims who are also said to bear guilt – greater even than the average non-believer. These are the hypocrites, or “Munafiqin,” whom Muhammad referred to in the most derogatory terms. A hypocrite is considered to be a Muslim in name only. They are distinguished either by an unwillingness to wage holy war or by an intention to corrupt the community of believers.

When Muslims kill Muslims in the name of Allah (which occurs quite frequently), they usually do so believing that their victims are Munafiqin or kafir (unbelievers). This is actually a part of Islamic Law known as takfir, in which Muslims are declared apostates and then executed. (A true Muslim would go to paradise anyway, in which case he or she could hardly be expected to nurse a grudge amidst the orgy of sex and wine).

In addition to the murky definition of innocence, there is also the problem of distinguishing terrorism from holy war. Islamic terrorists never refer to themselves as terrorists, but always as holy warriors (Mujahideen, Shahid, or Fedayeen). They consider their acts to be a form of Jihad.

Holy war is something that Muhammad commanded in the Qur’an and Hadith. In Sura 9:29, he establishes the principle that unbelievers should be fought until they either convert to Islam or accept a state of humiliation under Islamic subjugation. This is confirmed in the Hadith by both Sahih Muslim and Bukhari.

In many places, the prophet of Islam says that Jihad is the ideal path for a Muslim, and that believers should “fight in the way of Allah.” There are dozens of open-ended passages in the Qur’an that exhort killing and fighting – far more than ones of peace and tolerance. It is somewhat naïve to think that their inclusion in this “eternal discourse between God and Man” was of historical value only and not intended to be relevant to present-day believers, particularly when there is little to nothing within the text that distinguishes them in such fashion.

Combine the Qur’anic exhortation to holy war with the ambiguity of innocence, and a monumental problem develops that cannot be patched by mere semantics. Not only is there a deep tolerance for violence in Islam, but also a sharp disagreement and lack of clarity over the conditions that justify this violence… and just whom the targets may be.

Even many Muslims who claim to be against terrorism still support the “insurgency” in Iraq, for example, and often entertain the allegation that there is a broader “war against Islam.” Although American troops in Iraq are trying to protect innocent life and help the country rebuild, Muslims around the world and in the West believe that it is legitimate for Sunnis and Shias to try and kill them.

Enjoying the sanction of holy war, the Mujahid reasons that it is permissible to attack fellow Iraqis – the ones helping the Americans… even if they are part of a democratically-elected Iraqi government. These non-combatants and combatants alike are believed to be the “Munafiqin” or “Takfir” assisting the enemy “Crusaders.”

Although we use Iraq as an example here, this is the same rationale that is ultimately behind all Islamic terror, from the Philippines to Thailand. Wherever the religion of Islam is a minority, there are always radicals who believe that violence is justified in bringing it to dominance – just as Muhammad taught by example in places like Mecca and the land of al-Harith.

And what of the so-called “innocents” who suffer from the bombings and shootings? Even in Muhammad’s time they were unavoidable. The much-touted hadith in which Muhammad forbade the killing of women also indicates that there were such casualties in his conflicts.

If there is any doubt that he believed that the forbidden is sometimes necessary, it should be put to rest by an incident in which Muhammad’s men warned him that a planned night raid against an enemy camp would mean that women and children would be killed. He merely replied “they are of them,” meaning the men.

This is the slippery slope that is opened by the sanction of holy war. What starts out as the perception of a noble cause of self-defense against a supposed threat gradually devolves into a “let Allah sort them out” campaign through a series of logical steps that are ultimately justified by the sublime goal of Islamic rule.

Islam is not intended to co-exist as an equal with other religions. It is to be the dominant religion, with Sharia as the supreme law. Islamic rule is to be extended to the ends of the earth, and resistance is to be dealt with by any means necessary.

Apologists in the West often shrug off the Qur’an’s many verses of violence by saying that they are only relevant in a “time of war.”

To this, Islamic terrorists would agree. They are at war.

Islam is a Democracy

The Myth:

Islam is compatible with democratic principles. The religion itself is a democracy.

The Truth:

A democracy is a system in which all people are judged as equals before the law, regardless of race, religion or gender. The vote of every individual counts as much as the vote of any other. The collective will of the people then determines the rules of society.

Under Islamic law, only Muslim males enjoy full rights. The standing of a woman is often half that of a man’s – sometimes even less. Non-Muslims have no standing with a Muslim.

The Islamic state is guided by Islamic law, derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah. A body of clerics interprets the law and applies it to all circumstances social, cultural and political. The people are never to be placed above the Qur’an and Sunnah any more than man should be above Allah.

It is somewhat debatable as to whether there are any states in the Muslim world that qualify as actual democracies. There is no denying, however, that the tiny handful that are often held up as democratic nations are ones in which deep tension exists between the government and religious leaders, as the later often complain that it is an idolatrous system imposed on them.

The Qur’an is to Muslims what the Bible is to Christians (and the Torah to Jews).

The Truth:

The Qur’an only contains what is presented as the literal words of Allah – as relayed by Muhammad. It can be compared to a manufactured text that includes only the words of Jesus (the so-called “red-letter” verses) extracted from their New Testament historical context and then randomly mixed together (the chapters of the Qur’an are arranged by size and themes are rarely consistent even within each chapter).

By contrast, the Bible contains history and biographical detail. For example, there is nothing in the Qur’an that details Muhammad’s life, whereas the Bible contains four gospels that present all that is known about the biography of Jesus. Another distinction is that when the Bible commands violence (as it does in a handful of Old Testament verses) the intended target is explicitly defined within the passage, leaving little doubt that it is a recounting of history and not an open-ended command for anyone else to do the same.

Despite the rhapsody with which Muslims sing the Qur’an’s praises, there is an obvious reason why only a minority have actually bothered to delve deeper than an occasional sporadic perusal through its pages. The random arrangement of verses and near absence of context makes it difficult to understand. For this reason the Qur’an is rarely printed without the incorporation of voluminous commentary (that usually expresses the personal preferences of the translator).

In fact, the Muslim counterpart to the Bible is the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira combined.

The Hadith is a collection of anecdotes and historical accounts of Muhammad’s life based on the relayed narrations of those who lived with him. Unfortunately, authenticity varies. But the most dependable compilers are agreed by Muslims scholars to be Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, followed by Abu Dawud. It is on the Hadith that Islamic law (Sharia) is based.

The Sira is the biography of Muhammad’s life. Again, there are reliability issues which would appear somewhat bewildering to Christians, given that the gospels were well in place within the first few centuries following the crucifixion – which preceded Muslim history by over 600 years. Still, the most reliable biography of Muhammad was compiled by Ibn Ishaq, who wrote about 150 years after his death. His original work survives only in what was “edited” by a later translator (Ibn Hisham, who admitted that he filtered out several accounts that were of a distasteful nature).

A failure to recognize that the Bible is only comparable to the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira together often leads to faulty accusation and misplaced analysis.

I’ve reported on several previous occasions about “The Meme That Would Not Die”. Every time I think it’s dead and buried, it claws its way out of the grave and walks abroad, trailing clods of dank earth.

I’m talking about the venerable canard that Vlaams Belang is “fascist”. Or, if you’re a bit fastidious, and don’t want to go all the way, Vlaams Belang is “neo-fascist”. Or maybe “neo-Nazi”, just to make sure the ghost of Auschwitz hovers in the air over your revenant totalitarian.

Whenever the Vlaams-Belang-is-fascist smear is resurrected, I repost the above photo and say:

Look at this picture. Now, tell me: Who are the real fascists?

For the record, the man in the photo is Frank Vanhecke, the party leader of Vlaams Belang. On September 11, 2007, during a peaceful demonstration against Islamization in Brussels, he and other party leaders were knocked down, roughed up, handcuffed, and hauled away to jail by the police. Mr. Vanhecke even had to endure the pain and humiliation of being grabbed by the privates and perp-walked to the bus with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Now, tell me again: Who are the real fascists?

But the meme will not die. Its most recent visit to the land of the living came back in January, when the New York Times Magazine published an article about the LGF wars which included interviews with Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller. The author referred to Vlaams Belang as “neofascist”, and said, “Even to most right-wing sensibilities, Vlaams Belang is certainly beyond the pale.”

The most jaw-dropping moment in the article came during the author’s interview with Robert Spencer:

“Filip Dewinter has said some things I deplore,” Spencer says. “But I don’t consider myself responsible for him just because I was at this conference and he was, too. That’s an outrageous kind of guilt by association. Let me ask you this: a few years ago I spoke at a Yom Kippur service, and one of the other speakers was Hillary Clinton. Does that make me a supporter or her work, or her of mine?” [emphasis added]

By referring to “guilt” without even an “alleged” to soften it, Mr. Spencer implicitly supported the author’s contention that Vlaams Belang is “neofascist”. That even a redoubtable Counterjihad warrior like Robert Spencer could still be held in thrall by the “fascist” smear only goes to show how hard the meme is to kill.

Then, of course, we had Glenn Beck and his “fascist” scattergun spraying all those European “right-wing extremists”, including Geert Wilders.

But it gets even worse. The most recent issue of National Review features an article entitled “Censorship as ‘Tolerance’“ by Jacob Mchangama. In the third paragraph of an otherwise excellent overview of the suppression of free speech in Europe, Mr. Mchangama says:
– – – – – – – – –

In Belgium, the admittedly quasi-fascist Flemish-nationalist party Vlaams Blok (now Vlaams Belang) was convicted of racism in 2004.

“Admittedly”? Who “admitted” it?

And where’s the evidence of “fascism”?

Nobody has any. This is just something that everybody knows.

Yes, the Meme of the Living Dead is back. If the venue were The New York Times or The New Republic, it would be a “ho-hum, there they go again” moment. We could simply ignore it and go about our business.

But National Review??

As its in-house superstar, the magazine’s masthead boasts Jonah Goldberg, the author of the indispensable Liberal Fascism. Couldn’t they have asked his advice about the definition of “fascism”?

Nobody knows better than Mr. Goldberg the most important fact about fascism, one that the socialists and communists have successfully obfuscated for the past seventy years: fascism is a form of totalitarian socialism. Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini were three peas in a totalitarian pod.

Vlaams Belang, on the other hand, is one of the most liberty-oriented free-market parties in Europe. It’s less socialist than the Republican Party of the United States. What makes it the enemy of the Belgian (and EU) establishment is its unabashed nationalism and its push for an independent Flanders. This puts it beyond the pale, and makes the “fascist” label necessary so that it can be confined to the Outer Nazi Darkness along with all the other politically unacceptable groups.

And let’s face it: when the detractors of Vlaams Belang say “fascist”, they deliberately conflate the word with “Nazi”, with the ultimate goal being to bring the Holocaust Cone of Silence down over the party so that its message can never, ever be heard by anyone who hopes to remain respectable.

This shunning of “Nazis” is very effective. It results in what I call the Screaming Nazi Heeber-Jeebers, a highly contagious affliction that causes anyone so accused to run and hide under the bed and keep very, very quiet until the fever passes.

The appropriate response to the Nazi accusation is not to deny it, because denial implicitly acknowledges the validity of the assumptions behind the accusation. The proper reaction is to ignore the accuser, or even better, laugh in his face.

Just imagine a prominent talking head on TV, one of the usual conservative suspects. Picture him being called “racist” or a “fascist”. Now see him double over with laughter at his interviewer, tears running down his face, speechless in his merriment.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Vlaams Belang is repeatedly smeared as “fascist” because of its predecessor, Vlaams Blok. If you trace its history far enough back, you find ex-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. This puts the modern party beyond the pale, even though none of those old leaders remain, and there’s no sign of Jew-hatred left in Vlaams Belang.

The ugly secret about Belgium — and most of the rest of Europe — is that there are far more anti-Semites on the Left than the Right, and farther Left you go, the more virulent the Jew-hatred. Filip Dewinter has steadfastly championed the Jews of Antwerp in the Flemish parliament, while some of his socialist colleagues were marching in alongside radical Muslims, chanting “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!”

We have a parallel situation in the United States with the Democrats, who until the 1960s were the party of bigotry, segregation, and white supremacy. Forty years later Sen. Robert Byrd could hang with the Progressives, despite the fact that he was a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Nobody held it against him.

However, any Republican who ventures within a hundred miles of a Confederate flag can expect a tsunami of vitriol branding him a “racist”, a “supporter of slavery”, and much, much more. There’s nothing anyone can do anything about this double standard; it’s just the way the rigged media game works. The Progressives get away with virtually anything, but a conservative is doomed.

It’s the same with the communists. Ex-communists — some of them with blood on their hands — have practiced politics openly in Europe since 1989. There’s a tacit agreement among the elite not to look too closely at the past indiscretions of the Left, but the Right is fair game.

And so it is with Vlaams Belang. After years and years of attacks, the only thing definite its opponents could come up with is that Filip Dewinter has a cross on his bookshelf. Nevertheless, the rules of the game make the party “neo-fascist”, and that’s that. Everybody knows it.

Et tu, National Review?

It’s time to sharpen our wooden stakes and dust off the silver bullets: this undead meme needs to be sent to its final abode.